The Power of Friendship
by Sasha.Rizzoli
Summary: The squad is exhausted and working a case for three days straight. Emotions run high but one detective is already grieving the loss of a lover. EO friendship.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: I've started another new story...I have a short attention span. Lol! This chapter is for Veiled Obsessions, thanks for your help! Please read and review.**

**Disclaimer: Own nothing that doesn't belong to me. Lol!**

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The detectives had been working for seventy-three hours straight, trying to find an abducted seven year old girl named Dakota Messing. The little red haired, hazel eyes girl with freckles and pink rimmed glasses was wearing a little white dress with yellow flowers when she was abducted from her front yard. Her mother had gone inside to answer the telephone and when she returned five minutes later, young Dakota was gone.

Olivia threw her blue inked pen in anger. "We'll never find her before the bastard ends up killing her." She growled in frustration and exhaustion.

"We have to keep going under the assumption that she is still alive, Olivia! You know that!" He yelled in equal frustration and exhaustion.

Olivia stood up. She was moody as hell; she hadn't slept in four days since she'd been called in for a case twelve hours before this one had started.

"Screw you!" She yelled tiredly in his face, pointing at him with her right index finger.

"Get the hell out of my face!" He pushed her frame back, eyes tired.

Cragen overheard the commotion and stormed out of his office.

"Benson! Go to the rooftop and get some fresh air. Stabler, my office!"

Olivia nodded and stumbled tiredly up to the rooftop, and Elliot went in to Captain Cragen's office.

"Take a seat, Elliot." Cragen said softly as he closed the office door.

He took a seat behind his desk and looked sadly at the exhausted detective sitting in the chair on the other side of the desk.

"Elliot, why did you do that to her? You know that she's still grieving the loss of her fiancé. She loved Gavin and was actually so close to her dream of getting married. She was there when he died, Elliot. You know that."

Elliot looked down at his black work shoes and sighed. He hadn't meant to go off at Olivia. He was frustrated and exhausted, just like she was, and he just wasn't thinking straight.

Gavin Spencer, her fiancé, died in a car accident just four weeks before she'd been burying herself in work. She'd force herself to work fourteen hour shifts. Olivia would be the first detective in, in the morning and the last to leave at night.

Elliot, Cragen, Fin and Munch were all very worried about her but she being her stubborn, independent self, kept insisting that she was fine and coping with Gavin's death. They knew her well enough to know that she was far from fine.

Elliot looked up at his superior again and got up out of the chair. "I'm going to go talk to her."

Cragen picked up his pen and nodded. "Good idea."

Elliot walked out of the captain's office and headed up to the rooftop to apologize to his best friend.

-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-

Elliot opened the rooftop door and stepped out, looking for the beautiful and still-weary detective. He couldn't find her until something caught his eye. He walked around the air conditioner vent and gasped in shock.

"Liv!" He ran over to her unconscious body and kneeled down beside her. He found her pulse and sighed before feeling her forehead, gasping at the heat that was radiating off her body.

Elliot grabbed out his cell phone and dialled 9-1-1.

"..._Please state your emergency."_

"This is Detective Elliot Stabler of the 16th precinct. I need an ambulance at the 1-6 immediately. Unconscious detective on the rooftop; she's scorching to the touch." He was panicking as he spoke.

"_Hang tight, sir. An ambulance has responded to the call and should be there in a few minutes."_

"Thanks." Elliot said and snapped his cell phone shut before putting it in to his coat pocket.

Elliot gently placed Olivia's head in his lap and brushed back her hair out of her face. "Wake up, Liv. Wake up." He murmured.

Olivia's eyes fluttered but didn't open. "Wha-What happened, El?" She asked disorientated.

Elliot looked down and noticed that her eyes were still closed but she was awake.

"I don't know, 'Livia. I came out here and found you unconscious here on the ground. You've got a nasty gash on the side of your head. What's the last thing you remember?"

Olivia opened her eyes and looked up in to Elliot's azure blue eyes. "Coming up here to cool off. I was looking down at the busy street below and then I started to feel dizzy and hot...then everything went black." She explained.

The EMTs came from the elevator with Captain Cragen in tow, panicking.

"You alright, Liv?" He asked as a young brown haired male EMT looked her over.

Olivia rubbed her forehead. She had a throbbing, pulsing headache. "Fine." She muttered, but Cragen knew that she was lying.

The EMTs went to lift her on to the gurney which was lowered but Olivia stopped them.

"I'm fine." She insisted, fists clenching at the idea of sterile white floors and itchy sheets.

"Ma'am, you need to go to the hospital."

"I'll come with you, Liv." Elliot said, trying to bargain with her. Anything to get her checked out; that fateful discovery of her prone form almost sent him into cardiac arrest.

Olivia sighed and nodded. "Ok." She whispered and got on to the gurney herself.

She laid down and the male EMT put the gurney up again before they took the elevator down to the ground where they put her in the back of the ambulance.

"Keep me updated, Elliot." Cragen said as Elliot got in to the back as well.

Elliot nodded and closed the door.

-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-

By the time she came to, the headache she had suffered through was disappearing. Holding herself upright, she glances at the man in the corner of her room, dozing after the long days they were subjected to. Almost instantaneously, the blue eyes open, and concern floods his face.

"Olivia?" He asks.

"Hey, Elliot. Sorry for scaring you up there." She says softly.

"Don't worry about it." He says with a tight smile. "Just don't faint on me again anytime soon, you hear?"

"Yeah, I hear you." Her eyes flutter closed, but she hears the familiar footsteps of a doctor.

"Ms. Benson. So sorry to have to see you again so soon." The doctor says quietly.

"Jennifer?" She gasps with recognition.

Elliot hesitantly pipes up, "Do you know her, Olivia?"

"Yeah." She says quietly, eyes sad. "Meet Dr. Jennifer Simms, my late fiancé's surgeon."


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: Sorry for the long wait, I wasn't sure where I was going to go with this story. But anyways here's chapter 2. Please read and review if you want it to continue otherwise it will not be continued.**

**Dislcaimer: Only own the Doctor.**

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"Nice to meet you, Elliot." Doctor Simms shook Elliot's hand before turning back to her patient.

"I thought you were a surgeon?" Olivia raised an eyebrow as she asked in confusion.

"I am but I also work in the Emergency Room when they are short an Attending Physician. When I saw your name on the board I requested your case. I hope that it is alright with you?" She asked before looking down at the medical chart in her hand.

Olivia nodded with a slight smile. "That's fine. Thanks. I perfer to have a doctor I know."

Jennifer nodded with smile. "I have your blood test results, Olivia. Would you like Elliot to be in here with you as I read them out?" She asked to confirm before reading them out.

"Yes, I don't want Elliot to leave so he can hear."

Jennifer nodded again and looked down at the results in her hand again. "Ok then. Your fainting episode appears to be caused by lack of sleep, a low blood sugar level and emotional distress. I prescribed you valium, haven't you been taking it?" Doctor Simms asked softly.

Olivia shook her head, slowly. "I didn't want to take narcotics. I said that when you prescribed them to me," she admitted.

Doctor Simms sighed. "Ok. Well I have to keep you in over night for observation. I need to re-check your temperature too," she informed the woman and pulled out a thermometer.

Olivia rolled on to her side and let the caring doctor put the thermometer in her ear.

It beeped and Jennifer took it out to read the read out on the digital screen.

"Olivia, you're temperature is still 102.7. Are you feeling alright?" Dr Simms asked. Eyes and voice filled with concern.

Olivia rubbed her exhausted deep mocha orbs and curled up in the ichy white hospital bed, still lying on her side. "I feel really tired and I have a stomach ache," she answered very meekly before closing her eyes and immediately drifting off to sleep.

Elliot looked at the young doctor. "What the hell is wrong with her? Please tell me that it's nothing serious," he practically pleaded with the doctor, standing beside the chair, he was sitting in.

Jennifer sighed and took a slow deep breath. "I don't know, Elliot. I am going to have to run some more tests so we can see what we are dealing with here," she replied before being startled by Olivia's heart monitor, which had been beeping in a normal rhythm, began to beep like crazy.

Jennifer pressed the emergency button and turned to Elliot. "I'm sorry, Elliot but you need to leave."

"No. No. Please," he begged the doctor, not wanting to leave his partner's side.

"I'm sorry," she replied, just as another doctor and three nurses ran in to the small hospital room.

"Please pull through this, Liv," Elliot prayed as he walked out of his best friend's hospital room, hoping that she would pull through what ever she was suffering from.

The detective found himself pacing the busy, loud, daunting Emergency Department hallway outside Olivia's hospital room. His heart was pounding his chest. He could feel it beating on the inside of his ribcage as he could hear all the activity on the other side of the door. The doctors and nurses working on the woman he'd known for a decade and cared deeply about. He'd been there for her during the good times and the rough times, as she'd done for him, especially when he was going through his divorce.

-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-0-

Elliot didn't know how long it had been. How long he'd been pacing the hallway. How long he's heart had been beeping rapidly as he worried about his best friend. If she was going to pull through this or not. His fears even peaked higher as he saw Dr Simms emerge from the hospital room with an expression on her face that he couldn't read and he scared him.

He approached the auburn haired doctor and desperately tried to read the expression on her flawless face. "How is she, doctor?"

Elliot thought he was going to go in to cardiac arrest while he waited for the doctor's prognosis on the woman he secretly love's health.

"There was a mix up with one of the tests but we have it now. She's anemic, Elliot. Have you noticed her profound weight loss? Has she complained of weakness or abdominal pain before she did in there?" The concerned doctor asked the detective.

"Ah...Ah...I...I don't think so. I don't remember her mentioning anything like that. She's pretty stoic but especially so since her fiance...you know," he explained the best he could.

Dr Simms sighed. "Well she has been sick for a while so we are going to keep her in for a couple days to observe her and give her the medical care she should have received a while ago."

"What treatment does she need?" Elliot asked so he knew what was going to be happening to help his partner.

"Ah well the cause is her low iron level. She will continue to receive oxygen and she'll started to receive vitamin supplements. We'll be watching her very closely and taking regular blood samples."

Elliot rubbed his neck. "She's going to hate that. She's actually terrified of needles," he replied.

"Well it's a good thing we hook her up to the IVs while she was unconscious then," Dr Simms replied.

Elliot nodded. "Can I please go back in now?"

"Sure. She's awake but not talking much."

"Ok. Does she know what's wrong with her?" He asked to clarify.

Dr Simms nodded. "Yes, she is aware."

"Thanks, Doc," Elliot replied and walked back in to the quiet hospital room. Which now looked deserted once again besides Olivia in the bed with a nosal cannula in her nose and running up around her ears to keep the thin tubing in place.

"Hey Liv," he greeted her quietly as he reclaimed his position in the chair beside the hospital bed.

Olivia just looked at him and smiled sadly. She felt like an emormous burden to her best friend right now and didn't think he deserved to be subjected to being forced to stay in a room with her. He deserved to be sleeping off the long hours they'd been subjected to the last few days straight but she needed a friend right now more then anything.

"Are you up for talking? Or do you just want to sit here in silence?" He asked her softly before he noticed a few stray tears fall from her sad brown eyes.

"What, Liv? Talk to me."

"No talking. I just need a friend right now," was her nearly inaudiable weak response.

"Do you ah...?"

As if she could read the man's mind. She nodded. "Please."

Elliot nodded and gently got on to the bed with her and was surprsised when she willingly cuddled up to him, resting her head on his chest.

The detective delicately combed his fingers through her long brown hair and watched as she drifted off to sleep, listening to the assuring beat of his heart.

Elliot kissed the top of her head. "I'm here for you, Livvie. Anytime, anywhere," he whispered and watched her sleep.


End file.
